The Best Movies That Made Less Than $1 Million

Down to the Bone

Release date: November 25, 2005

Total gross: $30,241

Vera Farmiga—nominated for an Oscar this year for Up in the Air—made a hell of a first impression in Down to the Bone. And it was a doozy. Farmiga plays Irene, a mother and supermarket cashier who checks herself into rehab for cocaine abuse. Farmiga manages to avoid every addiction cliché. If you thought Anne Hathaway was keeping it real in Rachel Getting Married, Down to the Bone will recalibrate your gauge for hardcore.

Big Fan

Release date: August 28, 2009

Total gross: $233,908

Funnyman Patton Oswalt takes a break from the belly laughs to play a sad, 35-year-old New York Giants fan who lives with his mother and still sleeps under posters of his favorite athletes. The film delivers the kind of lived-in pathos that indies so often strive for, but usually miss. Though that shouldn't be a surprise: Big Fan was written and directed by Robert D. Siegel—who also wrote The Wrestler. Same palette. Different sport.

Brothers of the Head

Release date: July 28, 2006

Total gross: $45,082

Ever hear about the conjoined twins from the UK who formed an influential punk band in the 70s? That's the arc of this fake documentary, which barely lets on that it's fiction while it grabs hold of you. It's a freak show that rocks. Hard.

Humpday

Release date: July 10, 2009

Total gross: $407,377

Humpday is the thinking's man bromance. Mark Duplass (FX's The League) and Joshua Leonard play two straight males who contemplate making a gay porn together, and would rather go through with it than be the one to wimp out. Humpday is part of the mumblecore genre (a ghetto of low-budget films) which may explain why it made $71 million less than its spiritual cousin, I Love You, Man. But no doubt: This was 2009's smartest movie about male behavior.

Great World of Sound

Release date: September 14, 2007

Total gross: $22,011

A young man thinks he's training to be a record producer. Actually, he's an unwitting part of a scam: He auditions would-be singers in small towns and charges them a heap of cash (prices set by his corporate office) to record their demo before moving on. The film is like a deranged American Idol tour, playing off our need for public validation. If the aspiring musicians in Great World of Sound seem particularly desperate, that's because they're real aspiring musicians. Blurring the line between fiction and reality, director Craig Zobel didn't tell the participants he was making a film (or that they were auditioning their music for actors) until he'd finished shooting. Their disappointment is pitch perfect. And so is the result.